


I'll Be You and You Be Me

by bluebeholder



Series: Writing About Video Games You Haven't Played [1]
Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: After ARK Launch, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Two Simons, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 02:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5112194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon goes back to Omicron after the ARK launches. </p><p>(He doesn't have Catherine anymore.)</p><p>(But there's a chance someone else is still out there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be You and You Be Me

He isn’t sure how long it takes to crack open the airlock. The systems are down—all of them, Phi as dark as the abyss it sits in—so it has to be manual. And it takes a long time, opening that huge door without any help from the Omnitool. 

(That doesn’t work, either. Catherine tore it up when she went out.)

(But Simon can’t make himself leave it behind.)

When it does open the water surges in so fast that it ruptures everything, shattering walls and filling Phi with water. Simon thinks for a second that he’s going to be crushed, but the suit adapts. 

He has to walk back, following the fading trail of lights, all the way to the wrecked climber. It’s slow going: the seafloor shakes under him and huge creatures swim past constantly. Sometimes they attack him and he has to run, or he gets hurt and slows down. But he makes it, and begins the arduous journey of pulling himself up the cables. 

The light changes slowly, getting brighter by tiny degrees. He wonders as he climbs if the WAU is still active. Did it know that they’d fired off the space gun? Did it care? Or had it shut down entirely?

He can’t get the airlock at Omicron open immediately. But he has all the time in the whole fucking world, so what does it matter? He ends up searching several acres of PATHOS-II debris before he finds a functioning Omnitool. It’s crappy—barely works—but it will open doors for him and that’s what counts.

(He still can’t throw away the broken Omnitool.)

(Even if she’s broken, Catherine’s still in there.)

Simon goes in through the airlock. He doesn’t really want to deal with the Proxy that originally chased him into the Dive Room. So he stands in the airlock and waits as it depressurizes, and tries not to think too hard about what he’s probably going to find on the other side of the door.

“Who’s out there!?” someone yells from inside the Dive Room.

“It’s me,” he says, and pauses expectantly before he realizes how dumb that sounds. “It’s. It’s Simon.”

There’s a long, long, long silence. Then the door creaks open. 

The black divesuit is on the other side, red eyes shining out from under the hood. It doesn’t say anything. For a given value of stare (because how does that work when you don’t blink?) Simon is pretty sure it’s staring at him.

Oh, fuck.

That’s him. He’s looking at himself.

“Did you pull it off?” Other Simon asks abruptly. 

“What—oh. You mean the ARK.” Simon nods stupidly. “Yeah. Yeah. We fired it off.”

Without another word, Other Simon turns around and walks away into the Dive Room. But he leaves the door open, so Simon follows. The lights in here are still bright, still steady. It’s weird not to have to give his eyes time to adjust to the sudden light. He stands just inside the door, wary of coming too far inside.

Other Simon stands in front of a computer terminal, back to Simon. “Plug Catherine in, would you,” he says after a minute. “I want to talk to her.”

“I can’t,” Simon says. “She…she broke.”

(His borrowed fingers brush the Omnitool hanging at his belt.)

(If only he had the knowledge to fix it.)

“Damn. Wanted to give her a piece of my mind,” Other Simon says. He turns around and gazes at Simon with those creepy-as-fuck red eyes. His voice, when he finally speaks, is strangely light. “You look pretty good in that thing.”

“Yeah, right,” Simon says automatically. He knows what he looks like. 

Other Simon doesn’t say anything in response for a while. Simon wonders what he’s thinking. (And, wow, that’s weird to consider: what is Simon thinking? It makes his head hurt.) 

(Or it would if he had a head.)

“She screwed you over, too,” Other Simon says eventually. “Let you get left behind while she went to the stars with some clone of you.”

Simon shakes his head. “No, it isn’t like that. She had to copy herself into the ARK. She got left behind just like we did.”

Other Simon moves restlessly around the room. (Is this their whole world now? If the WAU is still out there, leaving is pretty much suicidal.) “Yeah. But she ‘broke’, right?”

The way he says it stings. He grips the broken Omnitool that’s all that’s left of Catherine tight. “Her circuits fried!” Simon snaps. “I didn’t touch her!”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you had!” Other Simon shouts. His fist slams down onto a console hard enough to make the computer screens flicker. “You should have pulled the plug on her! You should have pulled the plug on _me_!”

Simon flinches and steps back. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

Other Simon hits the wall this time and Simon hears something crack in his fist. “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance!?” he rages. “We’re stuck here—we’re stuck here forever, alone except those _fucking_ things out there!”

“I…” Simon doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he’s had more time to adjust since he’s been out and about. Maybe not being trapped gave him a better chance at long-term sanity. Maybe he just hasn’t hit this point yet.

(Maybe that’s not even him in that other suit.)

(How would he know? They’re just brain scans shoved into new bodies.)

“Oh, right!” Other Simon laughs hysterically, which is creepy as all hell. “You didn’t kill me because you think you’re some kind of savior of humanity, even when it might be better to pull the plug!”

“No!” Simon protests. “That’s not why I didn’t kill you!”

Other Simon spins around. He stomps over and gets right up in Simon’s face. “Yes, it is! I know exactly why you made the choice you made because, newsflash, _I’m YOU_!”

If they were human, they’d be standing there breathing heavily and cooling off. Instead they just stare at each other while their circuits hum and whir merrily. Finally, Simon can’t take the silence anymore. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “If I’d have known…”

“We’re not psychic,” Other Simon says. If a robot’s voice can sound tired, his does. “Wish we were. We might never have gotten that damn brain scan.”

“Yeah,” Simon says. He shrugs helplessly. “But here we are.”

“Here we are,” Other Simon says. "All alone in the world."

The lights flicker. “At least we’ve got each other,” Simon says.

Other Simon stares for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, we’re talking to ourselves, but at least we’ve got each other.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sadly, I still haven't played this game and probably never will. But the playthroughs I've seen were inspiring enough. Hence this fic. 
> 
> I wish this had been a bit more philosophical, but I'll deal...maybe I'll write something else for this game? Who knows at this point.


End file.
